by Julie Bolt
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| The old Kiev Restaurant on 7th Street in Greenwich Village; Allen Ginsberg and Quentin Crisp dining there. |
It was always a point of debate:
Veselka, Kiev, or Ukrainian National Home
Veselka was busy and bright,
Kiev was for neighborhood regulars early or late at night,
UNH was to time travel into a Ukrainian private club from another age
I loved them all, but especially Kiev
For the best comfort food in Greenwich Village
And largest portions and lowest prices
And latest hours, the most tolerant waiters
However it was hard to decide whether to order a combo blintz and pierogi platter
or assorted pierogi platter
or potato pancakes
Real first world dilemma
Ideally friends would share what they had
And then there was the challah of clouds with butter
And oh how the boys had crushes on the Ukrainian waitresses
And the head waiter flirted with my mom, cheeks flushed like borsht
And I went so often they sometimes gave me a free cherry blintz!
I knew through my Bulgarian pen pal how oppressive the Soviet Union was
I don’t remember if I thought much about whether the Kiev staff escaped oppression
But I remember that December 26, 1991 was a great day
I had just moved to Philadelphia then
So I could not celebrate at Kiev
I probably just ate a vegetable hoagie
Gorbachev had the map of peace on his head unlike Putin’s face of war
After Philly, I moved to New Mexico, Arizona and California
In 2005, I returned to NYC, ready to feast on Kiev’s sauerkraut pierogis slathered in apple sauce and fried onions
New ownership resulted in Ukrainian-Asian fusion, and small portions,
aspiring to expensive tastes
Sadly, Veselka acquired long NYU lines,
So I decamped to The Ukrainian National Home
It wasn’t long before Kiev shut its doors forever
I will always mourn the closing of Kiev
I hope the owners did not miss the entire bright window of Ukraine’s democracy
Where are they now?
What are they thinking today
as people flee Kyiv
as Ukraine is bombed
as Putin says the dissolution of the Soviet Union that we all lived through is a myth
Our friends are dying in the crossfires of lies
The blue sky grows dark
The yellow flowers burn
Julie Bolt is an associate professor of literature and writing at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. Recently, she was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Transformative Learning in the Humanities. Her poems have appeared in Thieves Jargon, Slow Trains, The Red River Review, Poetic Diversity, Syntax, Shot Glass Journal and Home Planet News, amongst others. Her book is Border Pedagogy for Democratic Practice.